I could talk all day about the potential for a brand community to foster a sense of belonging between—and for—members. Belonging is at the heart of a great community.
But let’s remove belonging from the conversation for a minute. Let’s set aside that insanely important—but not singular—benefit of brand community and talk about the straight-up marketing benefits of supercharging your brand with community.
Because there are many. And these are the things you can take to the decision makers and stakeholders in your business to convince them that yes, you should definitely put time, energy, and resources into creating a community around your brand—whether you call your people members, clients, customers or anything else.
Here are 12 ways community can be your marketing superpower:
1 – Members can connect without you
If all things have to go through you as the brand leader, you’re a single point of failure. Creating a community with numerous ways members can connect without you supercharges the potential for collaboration and connection, which are gold for your brand.
2 – Extend support beyond what you could do internally
A community of people sharing resources, ideas, challenges and questions builds a circle of support that you could not even begin to meet internally.
3 – Move people from transactional to engaged
If people are renting a desk or office from you, it’s simply a transactional relationship and as soon as something less expensive, closer or more fabulous comes along, they’ll move on. If, however, they’re part of a robust community, they are a member of something special: your brand. This moves the relationship from transactional to engaged.
4 – Word of mouth
Building on number three, an engaged community member will tell people about your brand and how much they enjoy it. Those people will tell people they heard good things about your brand, and those people will pass it on. The word of mouth potential for a great community is unlimited. To state the obvious, this is the marketing north star.
5 – Insider status
This one tip-toes up to belonging, but there’s a nuts-and-bolts aspect to it, as well. Creating an insider vibe around your business strengthens brand buy-in, brand engagement and brand loyalty. Community is the bridge to bring people into this insider status.
6 – Direct access to you and your team
The closer you get to your members, customers, and clients, the more you’ll be able to serve them and learn what they truly need. Giving community members direct access to you, in whatever capacity makes sense for your business, will add a ton of value to your brand and expand your understanding of your people exponentially.
7 – Ownership of your brand
If you want your brand and business to grow and thrive, you need brand buy-in from the people you serve. The best way to facilitate buy-in is through ownership. So give members a sense of ownership by letting them participate in, and contribute to, your brand.
8 – Build what they want
Being in close contact with your community members allows you to better listen, learn and build what they truly want — rather than what you think they want.
9 – Unbeatable social proof
A community of raving members is the best social proof you can have. Capture and share testimonials, photos, nice things people say, reviews and kudos across your channels. The impact of you saying you have a great brand pales in comparison to someone else saying you have a great brand.
10 – Humanize your brand
The era of big brands broadcasting one-way messages to the masses is over. People want to know who you are and what you’re about. One of my go-to pieces of advice moving forward in this new era is to humanize your brand. Creating community is a great way to do that.
11 – Learn the language of your members
In copywriting, the best language to use is the language of your customers. It doesn’t matter how you talk about your products and services, it matters how your people talk about your products and services. Having platforms for community allows you to capture their language in real-time and use that language to inform and guide your marketing (and business) strategy
12 – Get instant feedback
You have a lot of good ideas, you have a lot of bad ideas and everything in-between. Running ideas past your community will give you instant feedback on whether your latest idea is a winner or a dud.
Start today
The power of brand community can’t be overstated. If you’re not already looking at ways to bring your members, customers and clients together, today’s a good day to start.
📌 A version of this article appeared in my Future of Work Voices column for Allwork.space
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